Culture and Software Outsourcing for Provincal Americans who Know more About Carbon Frame Bikes Than Shiva

Unequivocally, my favorite topic....

I'm visiting Bangalore, the center of the software outsourcing world, and have had the opportunity to work with and explore some software businesses in China and Vietnam.  I own and operate a (great!) software consulting business in the improbable locale of Chiang Mai, Thailand.  So, by way of argument from authority, I'll step up on my soapbox.

I think most of us try to do due diligence when interacting with other cultures - typically there's a book or some wikipedia articles to peruse and most of the important materials can be covered in a few paragraphs - something at first vague, about family and circles (China, Thailand),  hierarchical relationships (India), and obligation (Japan).

I think it's taken me nearly 10 years to really start to get those paragraphs.  Some people get it right away - anthropologists are actually trained in how to get it.  I wonder if any anthropologists are plying their trade in Silicon Valley, or if there are any companies smart enough to hire them.

The gist of my 10 year realization, is not only that you have to digest those paragraphs, but you have to factor out your own cultural habits, in many cases.  Those paragraphs are steel girders of civilizations, not trivia notes on behavior.  (I think we ironically focus on the behavioral recommendations because they're so concrete - but ultimiately I don't think they count for much as few people hold foreigners accountable by their own culturally-tight behavioral standards.   I still put soy sauce on my rice in Japan, put my feet on my desk in Thailand, and eat with my left hand in India).

Things get done in India, and things get done in Thailand.  Both places are top-down management to a fault.  Interestingly, the responsibility and the work in Thailand hovers pretty close to the top of the heirarchy and that heirarchy is less well deliniated.  In India, it's push, push, push, kick, kick again, done.  In Thailand, there's many people working hard to cover the weaknesses of those under them, and Thais tend to be less effective at kicking down. Broad brush-stokes, but geneally true.

The ramifications... In a meeting, don't genuinely solicit junior people for ideas.  It won't work.  Also, there's no reason to be an ass, but our niceness is not some univeral obligation - it's probably more a function of where you're from than what's correct.  This list could go on, but basically your not in Kansas anymore.  I need to read those paragraphs again.

Why it's so hard to do business in Asia...

I had a crazy philosophy instructor in college who leveraged the thesis of incommensurability to justify a radically conservative, post-structural, Roman Catholicism - about the time he wrote this article - Lance Simmons (1994). Three Kinds of Incommensurability Thesis. American Philosophical Quarterly 31 (2):119 - 131.  In not so many words, his argument was, there's no way to rationally or otherwise adjudicate between claims, so look for historical consistency, and become Roman Catholic, preferable an opus dei members.  You have to make a choice, so choose us.  There's no rational-basis for selecting a religious, cultural or ethical correct position - cultures are incommensurable like the hypotenuse of a right-triangle to it's legs.


While that was interesting for about a semester or two, and I still find many thoughtful people saying that, "you have to choose, so pick one," some mutation of the thesis of incommensurability comes up everyday, doing business in Asia, Thailand in my particular case.  Specifically, in Thailand, in most circumstances, it is ethically wrong to publicly humiliate someone.  That wrongless trumps the wrongness of say, lying or, more commonly, giving unclear or misleading information.  In almost any meeting of people, the primary appropriate thing to do, is to save-face, or keep-up appearances.  It makes it nearly impossible to have accountability or information sharing, because that entails fault (loss of face) or a suggestion of unknowing or ignorance (loss of face again).  Importantly, we are wrong when we aggressively push those concepts forward and jeopardize causing someone to lose face.  We're savages.

So, we get daily doses of real incommensurability:


American diplomat to Thai Gov't official:  "We're deeply concerned about IP theft and piracy in your country, illegal copies are traded openly everywhere."
 z
Thai context: [booboo - wrong: already inappropriate because it's a direct criticism]
Western context: [excellent - super-clear way to articulate your concerns so that you can begin to work toward a solution]


Thai Gov't official: "We're doing everything we can to improve the situation."
Thai context: [right, divert criticism, show concern, and save face]
Western context: [wrong, I've just been lied to - they could close the place tomorrow if they had the resolve]

The same oddness must play out in the human-rights discussions in China.  Lance had a point.